Michael Garza

On August 28, 2014, 28-year-old Michael Garza and 29-year-old Joe Thurman were charged with possession of cocaine in Houston, Texas, after they were arrested and white powder seized from them field-tested positive for cocaine

On September 2, 2014, both men pled guilty in Harris County Criminal District Court to possession of a controlled substance. Garza was sentenced to 10 months in Texas State Jail. Thurman was sentenced to two years in prison.

On September 21, 2014, the Houston Police Department crime laboratory tested the white powder that had been seized from the two men by police. The tests revealed that no controlled substances were present.

The lab notified the Harris County District Attorney’s Post Conviction Review Unit, which notified defense attorneys for Garza and Thurman.

On October 2, 2014, the prosecution and defense filed a joint motion requesting that Garza’s conviction be vacated on the basis of actual innocence. The motion was granted, the charge was dismissed and Garza was released.

On October 6, the prosecution and defense filed a joint motion requesting that Thurman’s conviction be vacated on the basis of actual innocence. The motion was granted, the charge was dismissed and Thurman was released.

About the Registry

The National Registry of Exonerations is a project of the Newkirk Center for Science & Society at University of California Irvine, the University of Michigan Law School and Michigan State University College of Law. It was founded in 2012 in conjunction with the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law. The Registry provides detailed information about every known exoneration in the United States since 1989—cases in which a person was wrongly convicted of a crime and later cleared of all the charges based on new evidence of innocence.

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We welcome new information from any source about exonerations already on our list and about cases not in the Registry that might be exonerations.